GPC furthers its GeoVillage Concept in India

GPC is currently involved in several initiatives in India both to tap into the country’s growing wealth of skilled geospatial and ICT professionals through strategic partnerships, as well as to offer its unique blend of GeoSmart methods, tools and data for implementation within the India market. The GPC team recently deployed a mission to visit several states and organizations across the country.

As part of this visit, GPC has entered into an MOU with ‘Desi Power’, a community electrification organization that has pioneered a unique approach to the development of renewable energy power plants and micro grid distribution which provides electricity to remote villages that previously did not have the services. The company has also created a foundation to leverage this infrastructure for community economic and social development; Desi Power has requested GPC’s support in bringing the GeoVillage concept and community engagement process to achieve this objective. The mission visited several remote villages and had an opportunity to talk with Community leaders, shop owners and people on the street regarding their special needs, priorities, and how access to electricity and services such as micro-finance, remote banking, agricultural extension, telehealth, telemedicine, and other such services can now be provided online. The objective is to utilize the renewable energy power plant not only to support household uses but also to empower businesses, agricultural pumps and other machinery, and ultimately to power telecommunications cellular towers that can provide access to online GeoVillage services. The foundation has also developed the concept of a family farm enterprise that allows several families to combine the resources for the development of intensive and unique crops intended to reach selected markets and thereby increase the income of local families. Desi Power and GPC have initiated a program for the promotion and development of GeoVillage for Bihar District and will be collaborating in the implementation of this program in the coming months.

The GPC mission also visited the ICRISAT facility in Hyderabad. Since 1972 ICRISAT has been a leading pioneer in agricultural innovations for the tropic drylands areas of South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, and is an important member of the CGIAR network of applied research facilities around the world. The organization is becoming involved in several state-wide efforts that will involve the integration of the agricultural sector with many other sectors and interdisciplinary collaboration towards a more holistic approach to development. Given the prominence of agriculture in the economies of developing countries, the interdisciplinary holistic approach being developed by ICRISAT will contribute significantly to more effective development interventions throughout the organization’s area of interest. GPC is working with ICRISAT to help shape the methodology that includes regional and local geospatial and related information resources and a multi-stakeholder engagement process to achieve the holistic development intervention objective.

GPC has developed the concept of GeoVillage and has been actively promoting its development in several countries and regions around the world. The state of Kerala in India has developed its own version of a similar provision of the government services to local communities through its ‘Akshaya Centres’. The Centres are run by private entrepreneurs in local communities and provide the local people with assistance on how to access and utilize the government services from the state. GPC visited the agencies that are responsible for the development and support of Akshaya centres which include more than 600 across Kerala State today. GPC also met with government officials responsible for administering state-wide spatial data infrastructure to learn from their experiences and to share experiences from Abu Dhabi and other places where GPC has been involved in Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) implementation.

For more information on GeoVillage, click here: https://bit.ly/GPC_GeoVillage

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MAFP deploys its GeoSmart platform to help streamline its operations and support decision making

MAFP as one of the renowned real estate developers in the MENA region, started exploring recently opportunities towards unifying and integrating scattered information related to their operations among various communities and across multiple disciplines. Urban master planners, infrastructure projects supervisors, assets and facilities managers, sustainability experts, sales representatives, and others identified in the MAFP GeoSmart solution a platform through which they can easily access integrated information any time and take the necessary decisions.

How GPC empowers the client

GPC leveraged its expertise and knowhow to develop with the client a proof of concept where several use cases were demonstrated to the to concerned stakeholders in the organization including higher management. This was followed up by an agile implementation approach through which several application modules span off by leveraging the foundation capabilities of an enterprise solution platform. Several underlying tools and methods were applied as part of the process that encompassed asset and facilities management, master planning libraries management, land use calculations, community facilities calculations, traffic demand calculation, utilities demand calculations, projects performance tracking, sales & marketing, business analytics via dashboards, etc. The solution components proved to be very valuable for various stakeholders in the organization including urban planners, projects supersviors, sales & marketing, asset and facility managers, executive management, and others.

The bottom line

The transformation from disparate and scattered sources of information in the enterprise into integrated access to information via a common platform brought about substantial efficiencies in operations and a solid step towards spatially informed decision making in the organization.

About our customer

Customer: MAFP is a key line of business within MAF group of companies. They develop several renowned communities in the MENA region such as Al Mouj in Oman, Tilal Al Gaf in Dubai, and Waterfront in Lebanon. They manage a turnover of several trillion dollars annually. Furthermore, their services are adapted to their communities needs including providing turnkey solutions that span idea generation, development, operations & maintenance, and even after-sales support.

Challenge: innovation, digital transformation, sustainability and smart communities are both a challenge and opportunity that MAFP continuously pursue in their drive towards bettering their clientele value added services as part of fully immersed and unique customer experiences.

Hosted: the GeoSmart solution was developed and rolled out for MAFP using cloud infrastructure services which provides the means to scale the solution appropriately at any point in time based on the business direction.

Solution: the GeoSmart solution is designed in such a way that is modular, scalable, and connected via integration with other enterprise data sources to provide single point of truth of information and decision support

Benefit or results: the MAFP GeoSmart solution resulted in several benefits to the organization as follows:

Streamlined common information management among various stakeholders in the organization across multiple disciplines including internal staff in addition to consultants and contractors

Contributed to accelerated procedures and standards unification in the organization among various disciplines such as land use, buildings design libraries, sales units promotion based on location, etc.

Provided a platform through which further solutions will evolve in the future to serve the growing needs in the organization such as malls siting, facilities management, and others

Provided an integrated view on information to support operational activities and day to day decision making

In the words of MAF GIS Manager, Aiham Tayar: “The MAFP GeoSmart solution has enabled us to transform scattered spatial and aspatial information into a unified enterprise digital environment. This has allowed our end users in various communities and across multiple disciplines to better analyze their respective operational activities and take better spatially-informed decisions.”

The Abu Dhabi Department of Urban Planning & Municipalities (DPM) leverages the electronic Approvals & NOC Platform to streamline real estate development and capital investment projects
GPC supports since 2011 the DPM and 20+ stakeholders in coordinating, streamlining, and taking informed decisions on urban planning, infrastructure development & real estate regulatory activities.
As part of its mandate, DPM is continuously working towards streamlining urban planning & infrastructure regulations while encouraging investment in real estate development. Given the nature of the regulatory activities that are distributed among various government and semi-government stakeholder entities, DPM identified the need to evolve a one-stop-shop platform for coordinating various types of approvals, no-objection-certificates, and permissions. This allows various stakeholders across the concerned organizations to deliver on jointly orchestrated services in an efficient and effective manner while fulfilling their respective regulatory mandates.
How GPC empowers the client
GPC leveraged its expertise and knowhow to develop with the client a GeoSmart platform-as-a-service (PAAS) or solution where several thousands of projects and activities are coordinated annually. The platform provides a venue through thousands of users from consultants, contractors, developers, government and semi-government employees across various sectors and with various disciplines coordinate towards successful delivery and fulfilment of the respective services. Furthermore, the platform is architected in such a way that adapts relatively quickly to the evolving needs of the stakeholder community in terms of setting up, as and when necessary, new services or reconfiguring existing services, managing changes in business rules, automating specific steps in the processes, leveraging geospatial capabilities, and generating operational reports & business analytical dashboards that support operations and governance activities, etc.
The bottom line
The GeoSmart solution developed by GPC provided DPM and the stakeholders’ community with the means to better manage and orchestrate common regulatory services and activities, improve their daily productivity, support operational and executive decision making, and last but not least, encourage investment through streamlined government approval services.
About our customer
a. Customer: The DPM is a key local government organization in Abu Dhabi emirate. It regulates the municipal sector operated by three municipalities in areas of urban planning & development, real estate development, and infrastructure development. In addition, the municipalities operate and maintain infrastructure assets and community facilities that are worth several billions of dirhams.
b. Challenge: DPM and its government strategic partners operate several legacy systems that shall be leveraged while further developing and rolling out shared and integrated GeoSmart solutions.
c. Hosted: The GeoSmart solution that was developed by GPC is hosted in the Government data center and is operated by DPM with support provided by GPC.
d. Solution: The GeoSmart solution is characterized as a Platform-As-A-Service (PAAS). This provides several characteristics such as modularity, scalability, connectivity, and integration with other enterprise systems. Furthermore, the solution analytical dashboards provide powerful means to monitor performance and adapt based on operational experience.
e. Benefits or results: The DPM GeoSmart solution resulted in several benefits to the local government as follows:
o Improved timeliness and quality of underlying regulatory services encompassing planning approvals, NOCs, permissions, etc. related to land, infrastructure, community facilities, and other types of related developments
o Enhanced government productivity by optimizing the development and rollout of individual solutions by the stakeholder entities and leveraging the common platform offered by DPM
o Mitigated community and infrastructure development projects delays and variations due lack of coordination of regulatory services among the stakeholder entities
o Empowered investment by enabling sound, well informed and timely investment decisions with mitigated projects rework, development delays, and additional unforeseen cost during implementation